


You Should See Me In A Crown

by smc_27



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Allie and Grizz are always friends, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Post Season 1, allie is dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: The worst they can do to her is house arrest. It takes them longer than it takes her to realize that.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 16
Kudos: 161





	You Should See Me In A Crown

The worst they can do to her is house arrest. It takes them longer than it takes her to realize that. 

She’s sitting there in this room in Harry’s house that she’s pretty sure was someone’s study, or something. Her hands are tied behind her back. The guard, Harry, Campbell and Lexie are there. And Grizz. Because Allie’s not even sure he’s still part of the guard, but he walked in and they didn’t stop him even though he’s clearly pissed about everything that’s going on. 

The super, super fucked up thing is that Harry and Lexie keep looking at _her_ like they want her fucking advice, or something. They have no idea what they’re doing. Campbell says something about jail for five years, as if that’s even remotely possible. What jail? They’d already tried to find the keys to the town’s actual holding cells, but of all the things they couldn’t track down, those made the list. Campbell says he’ll make something. Everyone looks terrified. 

It’s Luke who suggests house arrest, and it’s the first thing he’s said since they got here. She doesn’t trust him for a single second, because he’s such a goddamn sheep she can hardly believe he can make a single choice for himself at this point. He doesn’t even sound like he wants to say these words. It’s like he knows this entire scenario is exactly as messed up as it is, but is too much of a coward to do more about it than this. Pathetic.

Harry hasn’t looked her in the eye all day, not since the makeshift trial that didn’t feel real or right, whose jury was made up of people who literally threw things at her a couple days ago, and no one who could be considered Team Allie. She hasn’t seen Will since then, either. 

She ends up in Grizz’s house, which has been empty since the second night of this...whatever the hell any of this is. She’s honestly not sure of anything anymore. All she knows is that he insisted he be the one to guard her, that he’d follow Harry and Lexie’s guidelines. Which include basically that she can’t go anywhere without him or another guard, she can’t participate in social events, and she can only go to work and home. Her job is janitor in the cafeteria. She notices, very symbolically, that it’s Harry’s job she’s taking. Her shifts will be 10 hours instead of 8, but her rations will be the same, except fewer luxury items. She doesn’t ask how they’re defining luxury. 

So it’s her, and Grizz, and Jamie Barton, a senior who was friends with Cassandra, who move into the house. Jamie’s doing some medical training or whatever with Gordie and Kelly. Allie doesn’t know why they picked her to join them, but she also doesn’t care. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

Will’s across town in another house, watched over, she thinks, by Jason and some other people. Campbell had wanted Allie to suffer more. Lexie wouldn’t allow it. Allie’s honestly afraid of what he’ll do if he keeps getting shut down like that. On her worst days, she thinks any negative outcome could’ve been avoided if they hadn’t invited him into the power circle, or whatever you want to call it. Ultimately, it’s not her problem anymore. Except that it is. It’s the entire town’s problem. 

“Sorry about the pink,” Grizz says as he sets down her bag. She was allowed to bring two. She’s carrying the other one. “Cassie was really into it for a while there.”

Allie feels like she might cry. She forgot his sister’s name was the same as hers. 

“It’s okay,” she says, and maybe it’s because the look on his face, that he slipped and said the name of someone - people, whatever - they both miss. “It’s perfect.”

“It’s house arrest.”

Allie shrugs and touches a teddy bear on Cassie’s desk. The bear, too, is pink. She swallows the lump in her throat. 

“It’s a relief.”

“What is?” he asks, then sits down on the bed and leans back on his elbows. “That the punishment for something you didn’t do isn’t worse?”

Allie laughs bitterly. “I mean, yeah. And...Just being able to breathe. No pressure.”

“Sure,” he says, but also sounds a bit like he doesn’t believe her. Maybe he shouldn’t. Fuck if she knows if she even believes herself.

“Can I…” She glances at the dresser. “Is it okay if I put my stuff in there?”

He pauses, then nods. “Yeah. For sure. I’ll get boxes for her things.”

“No, it’s...I’ll just move them to the closet. This is her room. I’m a visitor.”

Grizz presses his lips together. “I don’t think we’re visiting, Allie. I think this is home now.”

Neither of them has wanted to say it, not out loud. She certainly hasn’t. They were the only ones who even alluded to anything close to it, when they were planning the expedition to go find farmland. They know enough about agriculture - they researched enough - to know that building a farm doesn’t exactly happen overnight, and that if they have any hope in hell of surviving past the next chunk of months, they’ve got to think long term. 

“Home’s a single bed with pink sheets, huh?” He laughs, then, and she sits down, lies back so her head is hanging off the other side. “It’s kinda perfect. I feel like a kid.”

“Do you wanna be a kid?”

Honestly? She’d fucking love to. 

… … …

Lexie has completely changed the work schedule. It makes little sense, if you ask Allie, but no one did and it’s not her business to worry about it, so she tries not to. She works from 9pm to 6am. It’s the worst schedule she could imagine for anyone, and it means she cleans the entire cafeteria and kitchen, and the first night, she literally doesn’t know how she’s going to do it all. Because there’s only one janitor now during the day working from 9am-5pm, the garbages are overflowing and the kitchen is a complete disaster from dinner. 

Allie knows that the entire reason she’s on the graveyard shift is because Lexie had the good sense to realize that Will should still be in charge of all the cooking and food prep. And they want the two of them apart.

Grizz is with her, but he’s been given strict instructions not to help. She told him she doesn’t mind if he sleeps. The first few nights, he was worried someone from the guard would show up to make sure she was where she needed to be, and if he were caught sleeping he’d be in shit. It didn’t take long to realize no one actually cares enough to stay up and check on her. They’ll know if she doesn’t show up or do what’s needed, because the place’ll still be a mess. 

It’s hard work. She’s good at it, because she’s never been the kind to leave anything unfinished and doesn’t want to know what ridiculous punishment Campbell would dream up if something wasn’t done properly. But it’s definitely the most physical work she’s ever done, and by the end of the first month, she notices her body’s changed from it. Her hands are always dry from being in soapy water, and the muscles of her arms are more defined. She feels stronger. Her feet don’t hurt anymore, because they’re used to it by now. 

Will’s coming in one morning - Lexie wanted to do a pancake breakfast for the whole town (minus Allie) - and he must be in an hour before usual to get started. Clark is with him. They look at each other, but Clark shoves his shoulder to keep him walking. 

Allie eats her meals at Grizz’s house. Every night - morning, whatever - she leaves her shift with leftovers from the day before that she’ll eat herself. Sometimes Jamie will sneak her snacks, and Allie cautioned her against it. Jamie’d shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s a fucking brownie. How’re they gonna find out?”

Allie likes her. 

She cuts herself with a knife one night because she didn’t realize it was in the sink, hidden under a stack of saucepans. It catches the skin right between her thumb and index finger and she doesn’t even realize it until she pulls her hand from the water to put something on the drying rack and sees the blood start to drip. She lets the water out and rinses out the sink, knowing she’ll need to disinfect everything before continuing. Grizz is asleep. She’s looking at her hand and trying to figure out how she’s going to reach for the first aid kit without getting blood everywhere when she starts to feel woozy. Despite how much time she’s spent in hospitals in her life, the sight of blood will always do her in. She chalks it up to being too little when Cassandra had her second surgery. Allie remembers seeing the bandage on her sister’s chest changed by the nurses, and how scary it was to see the bloody line down her chest.

Yeah, thinking about that right now isn’t helping her. 

She braces herself with her good hand on the counter, then grabs the nearest rag and slowly lets herself sit down on the floor. She tips her head back and closes her eyes as she wraps the rag around her hand. Fuck. It hurts like hell now, and though she knows she’s supposed to apply pressure, it feels like burning to actually do it. 

She isn’t even sure how long she’s there - she’s bled through the towel, but she might also just be bleeding a lot, and fast - but Grizz comes in and rushes to her, says something about calling Kelly. He also gets her some orange slices because he says something about the vitamins being good for her or...something. She’s conscious and hasn’t passed out at all, but this all just freaking sucks.

Kelly shows up faster than Allie would’ve expected, to be honest. It can’t be more than 15 minutes. And not to be a jerk about it, but the girl looks it, too. Her hair’s all wild and she’s still wearing pajamas, with her jacket and winter boots thrown on over top. She carries a backpack that Allie realizes is some kind of makeshift medical bag. 

“Jesus,” Kelly mutters when she sees the gash on Allie’s hand, which, yeah, she now realizes goes down to the palm of her hand. “You need stitches.” 

“Do you know how to do that?”

Kelly nods, shrugging off her coat. “Yeah. We’ve practiced.” Allie doesn’t ask what they’ve been practicing on. It doesn’t matter. “I mean, it might not be pretty, but I can do it.”

“Okay,” Allie breathes, and closes her eyes again as Kelly reaches for the black surgical thread. 

Kelly, bless her, starts telling her about people in the town and how they’re doing. It’s not like Allie is totally cut off - she’s got Jamie and Grizz, and Grizz has Sam who has Becca and Eden. She gets updates on the people she cares about most. But Kelly tells her about Gordie, and Allie fines herself smiling. Apparently, he figured out what vaccinations Eden will need and at what cadence, and that’s just something Allie had never even thought of. Apparently a few people have gotten pretty nasty colds, and Jasmine Alexander came down with a stomach bug and they quarantined her in the clinic to make sure no one else caught it. Allie nods her head. 

She’s being briefed on these things as though she’s still in charge. 

“Will’s okay,” Kelly says when Grizz leaves them for a minute. Allie thinks this is awkward as shit. “I’m sure you want to know. He’s good. He’s...House arrest is getting to him, I think, but he’s keeping his head down. I think he misses you.”

“Why do you think that?” Allie asks, and she sounds like a brat. Kelly threads the needle through her skin again - she can feel it. That numbing gel isn’t strong enough to take away all sensation. “Did he say something?”

“No,” Kelly admits. “I can tell. He’s worried.”

Allie laughs. “Maybe don’t tell him it’s my blood all over his kitchen floor, then.” Kelly doesn’t respond, and Allie opens her eyes. Kelly’s just looking at her. “That was a joke.”

“Maybe I just don’t think it’s very funny to joke like that. Not after what happened to Cassandra. After what I heard Campbell wanted to do to you.”

Allie doesn’t know what Kelly’s talking about, but doesn’t want to, either. It’ll do her no good to know what psychotic shit Campbell proposed. 

“Sorry.” She means it. Kelly goes back to working on Allie’s hand, and they’re quiet a few moments. “Does Will get to hang out with people?”

Kelly might think Allie doesn’t clock the way she flinches, but it’s there, just barely. Allie feels it; Kelly’s fingertips are brushing Allie’s knuckles. 

What she’s really asking, true, is _”Does Will get to hang out with you?”_

“Not often.” Allie hums. “Never alone.” Kelly ties off her last stitch and reaches for some gauze to wrap Allie’s hand. She stops, though, her own hands dropping to her lap, and looks Allie right in the eye. “He really cares about you.” Allie lets out her breath. “This whole situation is so fucked up.”

Allie really wants to ask Kelly what the fuck she’s playing at. She obviously has feelings for Will, too. Allie’s not too stupid to notice. And at least those two get to spend time together in the daylight. And honestly, she’s not surprised at all to learn that Will’s punishment is this much less severe than hers, even though they were charged and sentenced to the same thing. 

This was never about him. It was about her. 

She and Grizz walk home, and she keeps her arms crossed and chin tucked up under her scarf. It’s fucking freezing out. She’s tired and her hand is throbbing and all she wants to do is shower and get into bed. 

Grizz doesn’t ask her if she’s okay. She thinks he knows better than that. 

… … …

Almost four days into having her hand stitched, it’s still hurting and she’s super annoyed that everything is painful and she has to have it covered and work differently. It makes mopping excruciating. But the work doesn’t stop just because it hurts her to do it. So she tries not to complain, and instead goes back to feeling like it did in the beginning; everything’s slower and less efficient. She’s exhausted. 

When she wakes up, she hears two men talking downstairs. Since there’s only one who lives here, and the only other who’s here more often is Sam, she finds herself straining to see if she can figure out whose voice it is. 

There’s a knock at her door and she figures it’s Grizz, so she tells him to come in, but it’s fucking _Harry_. It’s dark out - it’s nearly 7:30 - and he doesn’t have his coat or shoes on. She wonders how long he’s been here. 

She’s annoyed that he just walked in. 

She’s even more bothered by the fact that she’s literally in bed, in a long sleeved tee shirt and underwear under the covers. Not that he hasn’t seen more of her, but that feels like a hundred years ago, and too much has happened now to look back at that even a little fondly. 

“I heard you got hurt.” She scoffs, leans up on her elbows in bed. Is he fucking kidding? “Your hand. Kelly told me today.”

“Wow. Your weird little militia didn’t report it back to you immediately?”

“Allie…”

“Fuck off, Harry. What do you want?” He looks to his feet. She shakes her head. “I’m fine. See?” She holds up her hand. The white gauze around it is stark against the black fabric of her shirt. This is the first morning there hasn’t been blood or something else seeping through the gauze. She almost misses it. “Still fully able to scrub pots in the middle of the night.”

“Why are you so pissed? I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She isn’t going to answer that question, because it’s just the most ridiculous thing that could’ve come from his mouth. 

“Well, thanks so much, Mr. Mayor. How lucky am I to receive a house call?” 

“Forget it,” he mumbles, turning to leave. 

She shouts, “Plan to!” after him, and thinks he leaves the door open just to spite her.

… … … 

By the time the snow melts, her hand is fully healed, save for a somewhat jagged pink scar that only bothers her if something catches it just right. She’s figured out how to make her job go by faster - or, really, how to do the work she needs to do with better systems in place to make the most of her shifts. The first thing she does is get water going to soak the pots, then runs the first bunch of dishes through the dishwasher while she’s dry sweeping the cafeteria floor. She’s figured out the best order for wiping down tables. Grizz usually brings a book and reads aloud either the entire thing, or passages he likes most. The best part of it is he always asks which she prefers. Some days she just wants quiet. Some days she likes the company. A lot of the time, he does sleep while she works, and that’s fine, too. She’s gotten good at being alone. 

When she shows up on the day of her birthday, Grizz tells her to open the fridge. There’s a single cupcake there, vanilla with white frosting. 

“From Will,” he tells her, and she nods, but doesn’t feel much of anything at all. The cupcake tastes incredible and she wishes there were more. 

She finishes her work just like any other day.

She hears updates about the farm. They’ve created a fenced in area for the turkeys so they can sustain their production, for one, but also ensure the birds don’t eat the crops. This year, they’re planting hearty, versatile items that’ll do well in this climate and ripen at different times. Corn, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, pumpkin, potatoes. Bean’s working on getting some wheat crops going, because apparently they’re almost out of flour. Allie thinks that despite the changes in leadership, the people who want to survive and make a system work are smart enough to figure out how to do it and eloquent enough to argue why their way is the best.

Apparently, she’s heard, Gordie’s even turned a few abandoned greenhouses into spaces for more delicate crops. Herbs, and fruit trees. They found packets of seeds in some of the stores, and have started a seed library. 

Allie’s so fucking proud of her friends. 

Campbell stops her one day on her way in to work and asks her if she’s as miserable as he hopes she is. 

She resists the urge to give him the finger, and keeps walking, deciding not to give him the satisfaction of an actual answer. 

She’s invited to Luke and Helena’s wedding. It’s nice of them to invite her even though she can’t go, obviously. 

Next she sees Luke, he’s walking into the kitchen at 1am with Will behind him. Luke just nods at Allie like this is somehow redeeming, or whatever, and Will moves out from behind him, comes over and wraps his arms around her. 

She feels mostly numb. He smells good, though. The same. It’s the familiarity that fills her up a little, and not anything past that. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, and it’s the truth. Grizz looks as shocked as she is. He pats Luke on the shoulder and they leave the kitchen. Allie almost wishes they’d stay. 

“I know. I wanted to see you.” She just nods. “It’s been...I can’t believe this is still happening.”

She doesn’t mean to laugh, but _seriously_? 

“What did you expect? That anyone would feel remorseful and decide to change the sentence?” Will doesn’t deserve this, but she’s on edge and she can’t pinpoint why. He shrugs one shoulder, hands on her hips. He’s acting like they’re still whatever they were before. She doesn’t know how he could think that. They’ve only seen each other a handful of times in the past five months. “You cut your hair.”

“Yeah,” he mutters, then grins a little. “Andriana opened a hair salon.”

Allie chuckles. She’d heard about that. She and Jamie trim each others’ ends, and do Grizz’s as well. But the salon is a good idea.

“I think I’m gonna lose it,” she says quietly, and then realizes she might cry. She doesn’t even _want_ to talk to Will about this, but here they are. And she can only complain to Grizz so much before she starts feeling like a burden. “I hate this. What’s the point?”

“Allie,” Will says, voice choked. “In a few months they’ll review the sentence.”

“ _Maybe_ ,” she corrects. “They said maybe they would.”

“And you don’t think they’ll do it?”

She shakes her head. “I think I don’t trust anyone.”

There’s his grin again. “Me?”

She meets his eyes, but doesn’t say anything. He starts to looks confused. Like he doesn’t understand her hesitation.

She feels like she barely knows him. How could she really trust him?

He asks if he can kiss her and she says yes, because if she says no she’s pretty sure it’ll break his heart, and she doesn’t want that on her conscience, too. 

Luke hugs her goodbye, too. He whispers an apology in her ear, and she just nods, because she can tell he means it, and that feels more important than anything Will said. She doesn’t know what that means for any of them. 

… … …

It’s been a full year since they got here. Allie feels all at once like it’s been way longer than that, and like they just arrived yesterday. Things feel quiet, like everyone in town knows what day it is and doesn’t know what to say about it, so they’re just not saying anything at all. 

Harry walks into the cafeteria when she’s taking a short break, having a cup of tea and a bowl of leftover soup. He’s got his hands in his pockets and a shirt on that looks like it’s never seen an iron. Grizz is sleeping in his usual spot. Harry doesn’t seem bothered. Allie’s definitely more annoyed that he’s here than he is by anything else. 

He just sits down across from her, but doesn’t say anything. She’s not going to start. She just waits; continues eating and waits. 

“Can we talk?”

Allie furrows her brow incredulously. “Do I have a choice?” Harry sighs like she’s exhausting. She doesn’t give a shit if she is. She has a hard time believing anyone around here is more tired than she is. 

“The committee on going home has fuck all,” he tells her, and she doesn’t mean to let out a laugh, shake her head and focus on her soup. 

It’s just that she’s known that since like, two months after they got here. Any indication to the contrary is blind optimism. 

“And?” she asks.

“You knew?”

He seems offended, or something. As if any of the shit he pulled made for a smooth transition of power. 

“Why would you think I didn’t?” she asks, because honestly, does he believe that she was living in some idealistic dreamworld for her time as leader? From what she hears about the way things are being run, she’s _still_ the one with the best grasp on the full picture, and she barely sees daylight. “Sorry I didn’t have a dossier on everything I knew to pass off.”

“You don’t have to be like this.” She glares at him. He can’t be serious. “I need your help.”

“Fuck you,” she says, pulling her shoulders back. He takes it, as he should, and waits to see if she’s going to say anything else. That, or he just has no idea what to do now. “Like, are you that…” She refuses to use the word crazy to describe him. It’d be a low blow. “Are you that delusional to think I’d lift a goddamn finger to help you?”

“No,” he answers, and god, she thinks he’s actually being honest. “Campbell’s…”

“A psychopath?” she supplies, and he closes his eyes like he was wondering if she knew that, too, from before. “Yeah. And he’s your right hand man.”

“No, he’s my puppetmaster.” Allie tilts her head, surprised he’s actually admitting it. He must be able to read that on her face. “Or he thinks he is, anyway, and I’m fucking...I’ve gotta go along with it until I can figure out some kind of plan.”

She blinks. “What?” 

She won’t lie, she’s hit with a rush of adrenaline at the thought of stopping Campbell. And she does hate that a part of her thinks that the only person who could do it at this point is Harry. 

“It’s a long story, but basically he thinks I’m an addict and will do whatever he wants as long as he keeps giving me pills.” 

“Are you?” she breathes. “Harry.”

He shrugs, looks to the table. “It’s complicated. But I’m not...I haven’t been using for weeks.” She mutters his name under her breath and he looks up at her again. “Kelly’s helped me, actually.”

No surprise there. Of course Kelly would be the one he’d go to for anything serious; Allie knows he doesn’t really like to be vulnerable for anyone. Or, she supposes, that’s always been her assumption anyway. The person in this place he was closest to in West Ham was Kelly; it makes sense that she’d be his person here, even if they aren’t together or really even friends. 

“I just don’t know how to outsmart him.”

Allie shakes her head. Neither does she. Especially because she barely knows what’s going on and what decisions are being made. She learns about them, sort of peripherally, as they affect her. But she doesn’t know how Harry and Lexie are splitting power, and how much of a hand Campbell has in everything. She wouldn’t be surprised if Lexie stood up to him. But she also wouldn’t be surprised if someone - either Harry or Elle - warned her not to push him too hard. 

“He puts his hands on Elle,” Allie says, and for a moment she feels badly for betraying Elle’s trust. But it’s been months, now, of Elle enduring more abuse by Campbell’s hands and mind, and that thought almost makes Allie sick to her stomach. “Hits her. He fucks with her brain, too. He’s violent when they’re...together.”

“Fuck,” Harry mutters. He looks pale as a sheet. He’s in over his head, and he knows it. She hopes that everyone can’t see it as plainly as she can; it’d lead to fucking mayhem. 

“Catch him in that and arrest him.” It’s simple. It was her plan before everything. “He’s smart and hides it, but he also can’t help himself.” Harry nods, plays with his fingers. “Harry.” He looks up again. Now he looks as tired as she does. “What’re you gonna do after that?”

She thinks he came to talk to her about the committee and how going home is a joke. This isn’t that.

He shrugs, but then immediately says, “Get Lexie to see that this - keeping you on house arrest - is the worst thing we could’ve done. We need you on the council. You’re the only person who has half a brain for this shit.” She crosses her arms and pins him with a smug look. “Don’t look so satisfied with yourself.”

Allie scoffs. “Yeah. That’s me. Self-righteous night janitor extraordinaire.” When he smiles, he looks...God, he looks like he did the night they slept together. She hates thinking about that. (She hates it because it felt like potential, you know? Potential she knew they’d never get to explore.) “If anyone’s arrogant here, it’s you.”

“Oh, I’m very aware of that.” She laughs at how appropriate that reaction is. “Allie.”

(The way he says her name…)

“What?”

He reaches for her hand, tucks his fingers under her palm. She watches his face, but he doesn’t look at her. “I’m sorry for all this.” 

She can’t handle how serious this conversation is. 

“Wanna help me make a break for it?” she stage whispers, and watches the corner of his mouth tick up. She figures she ought to be a little serious; he’s being open with her and she doesn’t want to be the bitch who makes him regret that. “It’s...It is what it is. What’re you gonna do with me after you arrest Campbell?

There’s a split second where she thinks he’s going to say something supremely sexual, and she doesn’t hate the thought of it. How fucked up is that?

“Undo all this. Let you see whoever you want to. You must miss Will.”

He sounds a little bitter. She’s surprised by that, but then again, he’s still holding her hand. 

“Not really,” she answers without really thinking. Harry looks up at her from under his lashes, moves his thumb over her knuckles. “I just...I do miss him, obviously, but.” She doesn’t want to _talk_ to Harry. Not like this. But it also feels good to do it. She’s all over the place. “Not like I thought I would.”

“You love him?” Harry asks, and Grizz wakes up, sits up when he sees them. Harry clears his throat and gently pulls his hand away. Allie shoots Grizz a look to let him know she’s fine. He nods once, subtly, but doesn’t go back to sleep. 

Allie answers his question. “Not like I thought I would.”

Harry takes a deep breath, puts his hands on the table and gets up. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

He rolls his eyes. “How’d you go from arrogant to this in less than five minutes?”

“It’s a talent,” she bites out, and his laugh echoes through the cafeteria.

What she wants to know is how he came in here and her blood started boiling, but now as he’s leaving she almost wishes he’d stay.

… … …

She wakes up to the sun beating in through the window, sweat on her skin and her legs tangled in the blankets. If this were the first or second time, that’d be one thing, but it’s got to be the tenth, or something. These nightmares she has are a pain in the ass and basically throw her entire day off. Night. Whatever. Her sleep schedule. Her nightmares are random as hell and usually include people from West Ham she hasn’t seen in ages. Like the lunch lady from school, and her neighbour Maryanne, and her parents. They’ll turn up as murderers or zombies or other random shit and she ends up running, being chased, trying to hide, or…

It’s just stressful. It’s more of a nuisance than anything. 

She strips her clothes off in bed and tosses them out from under the sheets onto the floor. She wipes her hand against her chest where the sweat has collected there, and checks her phone. No new messages, but her alarm won’t go off for another three and a half hours, and she’d really like to get back to sleep. She never used to be able to sleep like this - just close her eyes and fall into it. But then again, she never used to do hard labour and work nights, either. 

She wakes again when someone sits down on her bed. She jumps a little. It’s dark out and she isn’t ever woken up this way. Her heart starts racing, thinking the only reason for this would be that something awful has happened. And she hasn’t even looked to see who it is yet. 

The door is open, letting light seep into the room, and Harry’s sitting there on her bed, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. She turns a bit, remembers she’s naked, and presses her palm to the sheets at her chest. He almost looks like he’s blushing. 

All he says is, “Hey.”

“Hi,” she breathes out, and fuck. Maybe it’s the dream she had, but she’s thinking the worst. “What is it?”

“I did it. What you said. Elle helped.” Allie feels a rush of something course through her and feels like she might literally cry. It isn’t even about her. She’s fine. She’s literally fucking thrilled that Elle is away from Campbell. 

That Campbell will be away from everyone. 

Maybe. 

“What are you going to do?” she asks, and the _with him_ is implied. Harry swallows. “Harry.”

He finally looks at her. She leans up a bit on her elbows, carefully. “We found this room beneath the gym.” Okay, that sounds fucked up. “It’s like, an old locker room or something. There was all this old football equipment and shit in it. He’s in there. There’s only one way in and out. Two guards at all times.”

That’s not entirely what she meant, but she also feels like the wine cellar was a horrible place to put people; they just didn’t have anything else. 

“And then?”

He pauses. “Lexie and I are talking about it.”

She realizes, then, that his reason for coming here was two fold. He wanted to tell her, yes, and maybe all this shit is over for her, if his words from a couple weeks ago mean anything. But he also wants her advice. Her decision-making skills and logic are rusty. Not that she hasn’t had thoughts about how things have been happening and some of the new systems in place. But it’s different when you know you don’t get a say. Then it can be all hypotheticals and there are literally no stakes. If he asks her opinion, there will or could be an outcome as a result. 

“She agreed to reverse the verdict,” he says, and Allie just stares at him. His eyes drop to her chest, then he looks away. “We’re announcing everything to everyone tonight.” She sort of wants to touch him. She stops herself. (She’s naked. The logistics of moving around are...She’s not going to do it.) “Allie, we…”

“Can I just…” She lies back down. He sort of smiles at her. Oh, he’s definitely thinking of that night in his bed. “Can I just have a day without…”

“We need to act fast.”

“You’ve been doing fine without me this long,” she says, and it’s meant to sound like a joke, like she’s teasing him. 

But he’s shaking his head. 

“Define _fine_ ,” he mumbles. 

“Careful,” she says, then turns on her side, pulling the covers up as she does. He just looks at her, then moves his arm so his hand is behind her on the mattress and he’s leaning over her a bit. This is the closest they’ve been in... Maybe the last time they were, actually, this close, she was in his bedroom and he was the one curled up. That’s a parallel she probably doesn’t need to think about right now.

“Why?”

She wants to laugh. He’s fucking flirting with her. 

(She’s flirting with him, too, but it’s different.)

“Might let on you actually like me, or something.”

He pushes a curl off his forehead and she’s just watching him. Honestly, she’d give almost anything if they could just be stupid teenagers again. 

“You’re right,” he says, then waits a beat. “That’d be the worst.”

Allie laughs. She feels something like happiness. She doesn’t know what the schedule is for tonight - the cafeteria still needs cleaning - but she does know that in about an hour, or something, a bunch of people she has only had very limited access to for the last bunch of months are going to show up at her door. 

It’s stupid, but she likes that she’s seen Harry first, even if the rules didn’t apply to him during her house arrest. 

“I should go,” he says, but doesn’t move. Allie nods. He reaches up and lifts a lock of her unruly hair, rubs it between his thumb and index finger. That’s familiar, too; he’s done it before. “Hey.” She glances at him. “Want your house back?”

The tears are in her eyes immediately, and she didn’t even think she was that attached to that stupid house where she lived with a bunch of people who don’t exist anymore. The second he says that, though, she’s realizing how much she’s missed it, and how much she’s had to do to convince herself she didn’t need it. 

“Yeah.” 

He gives her a crooked smile, pats her hip with his hand, and says, “See you around, Allie.” 

He tugs her bedroom door mostly closed on his way out. She stays in bed a while longer. Then she gets up, showers and gets dressed. 

She was right - a bunch of people come over after the town meeting. Bean, Gordie and Kelly are first. Luke and Helena stop by. Becca comes for a few minutes. Will. He hovers around the kitchen and smiles when she looks his way. He’s free, too. They could be together again. She doesn’t know if they will be. If she wants that. They’ve been apart way longer than they were anything remotely close to together.

This town would benefit from a fucking therapist.

… … …

No one’s been living in her house. She knew this, but it’s still really apparent when she walks in and _feels_ the absence of other people. It’s quiet. Tidy. There’s a layer of dust on most of the surfaces. The lights are all off, blinds drawn. She locks the door behind her. 

Gordie and Bean are moving back in, too. Allie’s happy about that. She doesn’t really want to be alone. It also doesn’t make sense for the town, obviously. She doesn’t know where Will’s going. No one’s told her and she hasn’t asked. She figures if he were coming here, she’d know that, too.

She opens all the curtains and blinds to let the light in, wipes down the surfaces in the kitchen with a wet rag and checks the time. An hour and a half til lunch is served in the caf. It’s entirely too fucked up to think about how excited she is to go eat food on a schedule with the entire town. Or, well, the first wave of the lunch schedule. She’ll give it to Lexie, the woman’s figured out the food schedule and rations better than Allie ever could. There are two servings of each meal and everyone’s in either one group or the other. She had Will figure out how to make things seasonally, or at least get a head start on that when they knew what would be planted. They’ve also figured out - and she knew this before now, from her time cleaning the kitchen - how to turn leftovers into something else the next day to reduce food waste. They’re almost entirely vegetarian now, since they ran out of even canned meat last month and they’re still trying to sort out how to responsibly farm the turkeys. Meat is a luxury.

This’ll be her first meal with everyone. She’s not the most excited to walk into that room alone and have everyone staring at her, wondering what she’s feeling, how she’s doing, and what she’s going to do next. Or, worse, wondering if they can trust her. She’s not naive enough to think that just because Harry and Lexie let her off the hook, the rest of the town will believe she didn’t actually do anything wrong, or that she served enough punishment if she _did_ do something wrong. 

Neither Harry nor Lexie have fessed up and admitted Allie’s innocence. Politically, she understands why. At this point, she’s not going to hold it against them. What’s the point? 

There’s a knock at the front door just as she’s lacing her boots (and yeah, she thought way too hard about what outfit to wear to fucking _lunch_ ) and when she turns the knob, she sees Helena and Kelly there in front of her. They’re both smiling. 

“Thought you could use a couple friends.”

Allie smiles, reaches out and hugs Helena, then uses one hand to pull Kelly in, too. Despite this weird, probably misplaced jealousy she feels and has always felt, Kelly is about the nicest person in New Ham, and Allie appreciates her willingness to always try to help people. 

The stares happen before she’s even two blocks from her house. It’s fucking weird, seeing people leaving their houses all at the same time to go to lunch. The weather’s nice enough, finally, to not need jackets, and people seem to be appreciating the sunshine. A few girls are wearing dresses or skirts. She sees a guy in a pair of basketball shorts, too. But while she’s looking at their clothing, they’re all just watching her. And talking. Gossiping. Or whatever. 

“Come on,” Helena says, and cuts someone a look from across the street. It’s Tyler Meyer. He was in Cassandra’s circle of friends. Smart guy. Allie doesn’t know what she ever did to make him glare at her this way. 

She’s gotta get used to people thinking the worst of her. Until now, she’s been able to ignore it, because she didn’t have to see any of them. In a fucked up way, she was insulated by her punishment. She already feels like this is worse torture than flipping her schedule and keeping her from the rest of the group.

Lunch is a basic vegetable soup. It looks pretty bland, but she doesn’t mind - her stomach’s in knots anyway. There’s a rustic bread that’s tough as hell, but whatever. She’s not trying to be a food critic. 

Kelly leads them right over to the table where Harry, Lexie and most of the council are sitting. Half the guard is there. The other part of the council and guard must eat during the second shift. Helena told her on the way here that Harry and Lexie eat whenever they want, but that’s mostly so that one of them is always in attendance and no one feels like the leadership doesn’t give a shit. Allie wonders, then, why they’re both here now. 

Before she can say hi, Harry says, “Nice outfit,” and she thinks he’s absolutely referring to the fact that the last time he saw her, she was naked. 

She refuses to give him the satisfaction. 

“Surprised no one raided my closet,” she says instead, because it’s true. Her house was untouched. She doesn’t know how they pulled that off, honestly. She was suspecting to hear of looting, or to at least go in and find things missing. 

Nothing was touched. 

Harry doesn’t say anything, just looks at his bowl. Lexie’s looking at him, almost like she’s wondering if he’s going to respond. 

She does, instead. “There was an order,” is all she says. 

Allie, then, looks at Harry, too. She knows the order didn’t come from Lexie.

Allie dips her bread into her bowl, and ignores the look Kelly’s giving her from across the table. She’s just sitting here next to Harry and it seems everyone at the fucking table knows something is going on, even though nothing is going on. 

She catches Will’s eye as she’s leaving. He waves. She waves back. 

… … …

The next time she sees him, he’s with Kelly. 

Allie’s not even surprised. 

They decided to turn the gym at the elementary school into a proper gym. They gathered all the workout equipment from all the houses they could, and brought it here. There are eight treadmills, a bunch of weight racks, two ellipticals, some stationary bikes, kettlebells, and a bunch of yoga mats. Someone hooked up a sound system and a television. It’s actually sort of awesome. When Grizz told her about it a while back, she didn’t really give it much thought. Now, when she realizes she’s got a shitload of time on her hands for the first time since they got here, she thinks maybe it makes sense to check it out. 

She used to love running when she was a kid. She and her dad would do it together. He got her into cross-country. He told her when she was about 12 that running was something he always did when he was younger and gave up when he had kids. And that he picked it up again the first time they were going through things with Cassandra’s health because he needed an outlet. She thinks, honestly, that he nudged her into doing it with him because he could see how angsty everything was making her. She had running with her dad, which was amazing because she never had anything with her mom, not really. 

She’s rusty as hell and her thighs are burning by the time she gets to the school. It’s not even that far. She sort of feels like shit that something that used to come so easily to her feels like work. 

She rests her elbows on her knees when she gets into the gym - she figured she’d do some weight training and then run back home - and when she looks up, there’s Kelly and Will, laughing together. She’s got weights in her hands and Will’s got his shirt off. 

Allie wants to leave, but she also wants to be the kind of person who’s got her shit together enough to be able to deal with this.

Look, she and Will have barely spoken in months. They’re clearly not doing whatever it was they were doing before. And she’s fine with that, really. She’s hardly even sad about it. She’s just fucking annoyed that he’s openly flirting with Kelly - _again_ \- and not just being honest with Allie about his feelings. Then again, she hasn’t been honest with him, either. She hasn’t exactly sought him out for an overdue conversation, you know? 

She doesn’t really know how to lift weights. Someone, though - probably one of the guard - has put together this like, handbook of sorts. There are drawings and explanations of the movements, and they show which muscles will be targeted. Allie keeps finding herself impressed by peoples’ ability to find ways to just make things work. 

Will and Kelly leave before she’s done, and they leave together. Allie rolls her eyes when they’re out of sight. This is so stupid. 

Harry’s walking on the sidewalk towards her as she’s running home. 

Fuck today, honestly.

“Lookin’ good,” he says, and he’s teasing, and she’s not here for it. 

“Need something?”

She doesn’t miss the way he checks her out before he says, “I was just looking for you.”

She raises her hands, then drops them by her sides again. She’s huffing and puffing and feels sweat dripping down between her boobs. “You found me. What’s up?”

“Can we talk?” he asks, and it seems at least a little serious. 

She wants to shower and eat something, but she figures he’s not really wanting to wait. He’s walking from her house, probably. They’re just a block away. 

“Sure.”

He turns on his heel and they’re walking side by side and it’s so fucking stupid, but she has this thought that this is what Will and Kelly looked like to her when they were leaving the gym. Not quite _something_ , but clearly not nothing, either. 

She’s so stupid. Harry’s a thorn in her side. 

(Mostly, honestly, because she can’t help but think that if things were different, they’d be really damn different.)

Once she has the door shut behind them, she realizes they’re alone here, too. Bean and Gordie are at their office - this room in the high school they took over so they could work on things. Whatever it is they’re working on right now. Allie reaches for a glass and fills it with water. If she were alone, she’d take her shirt off. She’s roasting.

“Hang out for a few minutes,” she tells him. “I’m going to shower.”

“Or I could come with you.” The stupid grin on his face tells her he’s not being serious.

She narrows her eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

His brow quirks and he leans his elbow on the kitchen island. “You know I would.”

She shoves his chest on the way by, then takes the steps two at a time. 

It’s weird to be in the shower and think he’s in her house, somewhere, and just waiting for her. She isn’t scared or particularly uncomfortable, or anything like that, but she is just super aware of it. She thinks he’ll probably stay downstairs, and then remembers when she was at Grizz’s and he’d just show up in her room. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t really ever her room. Or, maybe more realistically, he just never assumed she’d be undressed, and he for sure knows she is now. 

She pulls on some jeans and a tank top, runs a comb through her hair and heads back downstairs. He’s sitting on the sofa in her living room with a book in his hands. Looking like he belongs there, or something equally as ridiculous to think. Harry’d been in this house a total of three times before New Ham. Once when they were kids and her mom made the mistake of inviting everyone in Cassandra’s class to her birthday party. Another, their parents, plus Helena’s and Sam and Campbell’s, got together for New Year’s Eve and brought all their weird pre-teens with them, like that’d be a good time for anyone. The last time was probably three years ago, when Harry and Cassandra’d gotten into a big thing at school and he’d come over (been dragged by his dad, Allie thinks) to apologize. Allie can still remember hearing the way Cassandra had said the words, too, and how no one but the two of them could tell she didn’t mean them. 

Allie walks into the living room and sits down across from him on the chair. The book is War and Peace. Hilarious. 

“So what’s up?” she asks, and sort of braces herself for all the possible answers to this. 

She’s not stupid. It’s probably about Campbell, or the council, or some other thing Harry’s gonna ask her to do or weigh in on. She’s still mulling over whether or not she wants to be on the council. She wants to help. She liked leading. But people don’t trust her and she thinks suddenly being on the council is just gonna piss people off, not make them think she’s fit for it again. Worst case scenario, people accuse her of doing what she was convicted of all over again. She can’t go through that again. She shouldn’t have to. She wants to avoid it at all costs.   
She isn’t sure if she’s ready to be his personal advisor, though, either. Or whatever the fuck this is. 

“Campbell,” he says needlessly, and seems to realize that as soon as he’s said it. “He says he’s not gonna eat until he gets to see either Elle, or you.”

“Let him starve.”

It’s a surprise, even to her, how easily it comes out, and then just how very much she stands by it. 

Harry laughs out her name uncomfortably. She wonders if it’s because she’s just given him the answer he wanted. 

“We can’t just…”

She tilts her head, smiles blithely, and asks, “Why not?”

“You’re pissed, I get it, but…” He doesn’t finish. She waits. She’s not gonna give him an explanation. She won’t hold his hand through the hard decision. She thinks she’s right, and if he doesn’t that’s fine. He’s mayor and she isn’t. “We can’t just let him die. He sounded serious about it.”

He watches her shrug. “So call his bluff. You got any other ideas?” He sighs. He looks pale. She can tell this is really bothering him. “You can’t make Elle face him. That’s fucked and you know it. And I’m just not going to.” Harry thinks about this, then nods like he understands and agrees that she’s right. “Honestly, this would solve a shitload of problems everyone’s been trying to find solutions for. He’s too smart and too manipulative. He’ll win every time.”

Allie thinks Campbell’s both too clever and too self-centered to actually die by starvation, but she doesn’t hate the idea of him just removing himself from the situation and no one else having to actually lift a finger to do it. Again, he can probably assume that’s what everyone wants, so that’s exactly what he won’t do. 

But if he does, well, good fucking riddance.

“You’ve gotten darker,” he tells her. 

She laughs, which is an interesting reaction. 

“The world’s dark, Harry. What do you want me to say?”

He lets out his breath, looks like he wants to smile. “I miss how shit used to be,” he confesses, and Allie refuses to respond to that. Because who doesn’t? “I think about you a lot.”

The hell if she knows how to react to that, either. The messed up thing is she isn’t like, surprised to hear it. She’s more surprised he’d actually admit it. Because it doesn’t mean anything, right? Not here. There’s no way. 

If they don’t ignore it, it’ll become a whole thing, and she just doesn’t have the space to think about that right now, let alone to actually deal with it. 

“Why are you asking me for advice?” she asks, because she thinks what he just said somehow ties back to what he actually came here for. What he keeps coming to her for. He can talk about how she’s best-equipped of everyone to do the thinking, but there’s gotta be more to it than that.

He seems to think about his answer. This is a new thing for him. This contemplating shit. She’s used to him shooting off at the mouth. This suits him, too. 

“No one else will say the fucking awful thing,” he admits, and Allie knows it’s probably messed up that she’s a little proud of it. “You’re strong enough to actually put it out there.”

“You can’t just ignore things that make you uncomfortable,” she says, and god, he _knows_ this. He has to. He wouldn’t have gotten so much accomplished as mayor if he didn’t face enough things head on. Even with Lexie backing him up. “What, you want me to be your Leo McGarry?”

His brow furrows. “Who?”

Allie laughs to herself. “Nevermind.”

There’s a silence, then, and she knows she made it weird, but like, he ambushed her and asked how to deal with Campbell’s threat of hunger strike in this alternate dimension where there are no adults but somehow they still have electricity and the ability to text each other. 

_Weird_ is a relative term. 

“Are Will and Kelly like, dating?” she asks, and Harry freezes. He was about to get up off the sofa. Now he just leans his elbows on his knees, clasps his hands and looks down. “Tell me.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he whispers, then looks up at her. His hair’s in his face. He looks good like that. “You didn’t know?”

Allie scoffs. “He sure as hell didn’t tell me.”

“Dick,” he bites out, and really seems annoyed. “Sorry you had to hear it from me.”

She sighs, then says, “Whatever,” because honestly, that’s how she feels. Harry laughs a little. This is so fucked. “Are you over Kelly?”

“I’ve been over Kelly since before we got here.” She believes him, actually. Which is maybe surprising, or something. But from what she could glean from their first days here, prior to the whole shift, he was mostly just numb, and that while their old lives made sense to a lot of people, he was still pretty miserable. “It just felt like she was the only person who gave a shit about me, so I tried to hang onto that.”

He’s being sort of uncharacteristically vulnerable right now. 

But then, that’s not even true, is it? She and Harry have always had this connection. This thing they do where they can tell each other shit. God, when she was in ninth grade, he found her crying behind the gym because their idiotic french teacher said he wished Allie was more like Cassandra. Harry’d asked her what was wrong, then wiped at her tear with his knuckle and said, “I like you better, for what it’s worth.” Maybe that was the start of it. 

“I should go,” he says, and stands from his chair. 

They walk to the door in silence. She doesn’t know why she’s bothering to see him out, but it’s a holdover from her old life, when her mom used to scold her for not displaying her manners with guests. Every time Will came over, Allie walked him to the door after, no matter how close they were or how casual everything else was. 

Now, too, she wants to make sure the door’s locked behind him. She’s not paranoid. It’s important. 

He says he’ll see her later and she stands in the doorway as he walks down the driveway. 

“Harry,” she calls out, then runs after him in her bare feet. Her legs are already screaming at her from her workout earlier. He stops, turns around, and looks at her like she’s crazy. “Fuck.” He smiles a little at how she curses under her breath. “I give a shit about you.” His smile grows. He stuffs a hand in his pocket and looks down, says her name. “For what it’s worth.”

The look on his face lets her know he remembers that day behind the gym, too. For some reason, that makes her feel way better than she has in ages. 

She thinks way too hard about that for the next day or so. 

… … …

Elle polishes Allie’s toenails in the backyard of Allie’s house in the sun and they talk about all the food they’d eat if they could. It ranges from gross stuff that probably isn’t as good as they remember, like Taco Bell, to things they had here but ran out of, like kettle chips, to shit they’ll probably never eat again, like stuff their moms or grandmas made. Elle talks about her grandma’s lemon squares, and Allie thinks about the chocolate cake her mom made her for every birthday. 

Harry wanders into the back yard. She hasn’t said more than a few words directly to him in over a week. They’ve seen one another for meals, occasionally, and she always sits with him and whoever he’s with. Mostly because she doesn’t know who else to trust, or who else would accept her at their table. Harry said something about how sitting with him will make everyone else see that she’s innocent, and she’d made a joke about how this must be the first time that’s ever been said about a girl being around him. He’d given her this cute smile as he’d rolled his eyes. No one called them on flirting. Which they were absolutely doing. Which is stupid. 

But he freezes when he sees them. Maybe it’s that he sees Elle. 

Allie knows for sure that this is about Campbell. Given their last conversation, she thinks it’s gotta be something really fucking serious. 

Elle seems to notice it, too. 

Allie feels stupid as hell for having her toenails polished bright yellow and waiting for them to dry as Harry delivers whatever scary news he’s about to. 

He rubs his hand over the back of his neck like she’s noticed he does when he’s anxious. Which is kind of a lot, but she thinks he’s got it more or less under control. 

He sits down. Elle straightens her posture. There’s _still_ a bruise on Elle’s thigh. Allie thinks the girl wearing shorts is a big fuck you to anyone who doubted that Campbell was violent with her. It’s like she wants people to see. And Allie really, really appreciates that Elle seems to know (or at least be working through it) that what he did to her was in no way her fault and not her shame to carry. 

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Allie asks, because the silence is killing her. 

“Jesus, Allie,” Harry hisses, like for some reason they need to keep this all a secret. Like anyone else is around to hear. Elle’s just watching him. He hesitates long enough that whether he realizes or not, he’s confirmed what Allie suspected. “He cut his throat.” It sounds like it’s hurting him to say it. Allie sort of gets that. “He did it in front of Jason. Like a threat. Jason tried to...He couldn’t stop it, and no one could get there in time.”

Allie shakes her head. “Coward.”

Elle’s being totally quiet, and Harry’s got his eyes locked with Allie’s like he admires her, or something, for not feeling any remorse whatsoever. God, Campbell’s her cousin, and she…

“Shit,” she whispers. Harry’s brow furrows. She lets her shoulders sag. “Sam.”

Elle’s eyes close, then, and Allie’s getting a little freaked out at the silent, statue thing that’s happening here. Allie’s no mental health professional, but the girl’s got to have PTSD or something from all the things that’ve happened. 

Allie stands, and Harry looks at her like she’s insane for leaving right now. 

“Call Helena. She’ll come,” she tells him, and he’s already taking his phone from his pocket. “I’ll be back. Don’t leave her.”

“Allie!” he calls after her, but she just throws her hand up in a wave and shoves her feet back into her flip flops. 

Dammit. Her polish is totally gonna be ruined.

… … …

She’s waiting in his room when he gets home, which is way less weird than it sounds, maybe. Or something. Look, all she knows is that he was still at the church when she left, after the announcement of Campbell’s death. He was answering a bunch of questions she didn’t need answers to, so she asked Elle if she wanted a walk home, and then ended up here on her way back. She couldn’t tell you why Jason would let her in, but he didn’t ask any questions. He must trust her now. She wonders if Harry told them to. Probably. Whatever. 

He took her advice. Harry did. About how they should talk about Campbell. About how the whole town would question how he died and if they believed Harry and Lexie. She told him that if they wanted everyone to really understand the negative impact he was having on people, Harry might have to admit some stuff about himself that’d make him look bad, too. And that while Campbell was a complete piece of shit human being, he was still a human being, and they should find a way to talk about him like he maybe one day would’ve been capable of redemption.

It’s all the shit she sometimes thinks they should’ve done with Dewey. But. Hindsight and all that.

Anyway, she didn’t honestly think Harry was even listening when she talked. He was playing with the corner of the pillow he’d had on his lap while everyone talked around him, and when he was done with the meeting, having barely participated at all, he’d told everyone he’d see them at the church. Lexie had stayed behind, so those two must have kept talking. 

Does any of this explain why she’s here? Absolutely not.

“Jesus Christ,” she hears behind her, turns around and sees him with his hand over his heart. “What the fuck?”

She figured Jason would’ve told him she was here. Oops.

“Sorry.”

He blows out a breath. “Usually when I think about you in my bedroom, it’s not to scare the shit out of me.” She groans his name and he laughs. “What’s up?”

She shrugs, then remembers that she hasn’t been waiting here for 20 minutes for nothing. 

“Why do you trust me so much?”

His brows come together like this is totally random. It is, in fairness. “What? Why wouldn’t I?” 

“I don’t get it,” she says, and then he walks over and sits down at the edge of his bed. “When we first got here, you acted like…”

“That was a year ago,” he reminds her, and makes it sound really important, which he’s probably right about. “I did a lot of shit then that I don’t do now. D’you know I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in months?”

She wants to make a shitty comment about how that’s not really an accomplishment under the circumstances, but joking about his sobriety, or at least not taking it seriously, would be a shitty thing to do. It’s a big deal.

“I’ve become this advisor, and I…”

“Allie,” he says, and leans back on his hands. It’s a little inviting, she’ll admit. She hates herself for that. “You’re fucking smart. You get this stuff. You know what people need and how they need it. And even if it’s not what they want, you know how to get them to come around.” She’s just staring at him. She doesn’t know if all that is true, but she likes that he thinks so. “You’re valuable.”

The way he says it doesn’t make it sound like she’s some kind of literal asset, like she’s needed to do this thing and that’s the only way they see her. No, he says it as though she’s special, and necessary, and one of the few people he actually thinks could help anyone through this. Like that’s a skill to possess. Like when she’s not around, things are worse.

“And you’re my friend,” he adds quietly, as if he’s not sure she’ll agree and he’s going to be embarrassed if she doesn’t. 

She doesn’t know what possesses her to do it, but she steps forward, pushes her right hand through his hair and then lets it settle on his cheek. He sort of closes his eyes and leans into her touch, and it makes her feel so fucking good, this weird, intimate thing they’ve never really done before, that she…

“You’re my friend, too,” she admits, and feels his smile against her palm just as she watches it, too. “I should go.”

His hand moves to her hip. He’s not looking her in the eye when he says, “You could stay,” and it honestly sounds like a fucking brilliant idea. 

What she wants to say is that she’s scared of what will happen if she does. 

What she says instead is that she’ll see him around, and he nods and gives her a fake smile. She walks home by herself and feels so goddamned lonely she literally laughs at herself for being so stupid.

… … ...

She’s admiring her body in the mirror because she wants to and she can and if anyone wants to fight with her about body positivity, they’re welcome to try.

Okay, so she’s a touch on edge because of the way people have been looking at her lately when she’s at the gym. She’s taken to wearing just a bra and her workout pants because it’s hot as hell and they don’t have AC. Or, if the elementary school does have AC, no one’s been able to figure out how to turn it on. Also, it doesn’t make sense to run it when they’re just using this one room most frequently. 

Anyway, it gets hot and she’s not about heat stroke. 

She needs new shoes, and she knows there’s a way to go about that, but she isn’t quite sure what it is; she was under house arrest for that part. She asks Jamie during lunch, who says something about petty theft and Allie laughs and rolls her eyes.

“Just ask your boy,” Jamie says, nodding slightly towards the door to the cafeteria. Allie’s confused as to who Jamie’s talking about, but then turns and sees Harry walking in with Lexie and Luke flanking him. 

“He’s not...what the fuck? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jamie grins and takes a bite of her rice and beans. “Pretty defensive for absolutely no reason.”

Allie rolls her eyes, and they move on to talking about movie night this Friday, and how Jamie would literally trade sexual favours for some Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn. Harry sits down next to her with a tray in his hand, says, “Oh god, yeah. I miss junk food,” as if he was part of this conversation all along. 

A few minutes later, when Allie’s taking her last bite of food, Jamie says, “So, your girl needs some new sneakers.”

Harry turns to Allie easily and says, “What size are you?”

Jamie looks smug as shit at the fact that Harry just _accepted_ Allie being called _his_ , and Allie wants to scream or crawl under the table. One or the other.

Later, he lets them into the sporting goods store in town, telling her something about how he called for inventory of all supplies, not just food, and then he had all the locks changed on all the stores so only he and Lexie have the keys. It’s smart. It’s something she never actually thought of; they were more focused on the food situation.

It’s weird in here. The store looks mostly untouched. The shelves are still stocked the way they would have been, more or less, on the day they got here. It’s quiet, too. Quiet in a way Allie realizes - has realized since the start of her house arrest - is more of a feeling than a sound. Like the way a school hallway feels on a weekend, or how weird it is to be outside by yourself in pitch black of night time. 

He takes her into the stock room and flicks on the lights, which sort of buzz as they come to life. There’s a lot of shit back here. All useful. She’s happy to know there’s some resources they aren’t scraping the barrel on. They should be okay for clothes and shoes for a bit, anyway, with this store and the others in town. She’s following him as he walks between these huge, tall shelves. She watches the line of his shoulders, how good his posture is, how he’s probably due for a haircut. She likes the way he looks back at her to make sure she’s keeping up. She wonders what he’d say if she was trailing too far behind.

“What’s your brand?” he asks, as if it’s totally normal for her to just get to like, pick whatever she wants. Which it isn’t. In this world or any other. Maybe he’s had the luxury of just buying whatever he likes best, but when she was shopping with her parents there was always a budget, and when she was buying things for herself, well, ditto. “Nike?”

Maybe he’s just asking because that’s what he’s seen her wearing, or something. She doesn’t know. But he also puts a hand on his hip and moves aside so she can get closer to the rack of shoes.

He looks really hot. And no one really knows they’re here. He has the only key, she thinks, and he locked the door behind them. They’re completely alone. And for some reason that feels really important. She likes the privacy. She’s always liked it, with him. Well, almost always. 

When she steps into his space, he looks confused, but then easily sets his hand on her hip like he just knows what to _do_ in this situation. It makes her feel more bold, not more insecure. Which is a little surprising, but she doesn’t want to stop and think any more about that right now. Instead, she puts her hands on his sides and leans up, presses her mouth to his more gently than maybe she wants to. She doesn’t honestly know what the fuck she’s doing, so like, whatever. She’s making a move. He’s letting her. Whatever happens now, they can sort of figure out together.

She feels his fingers press into her a little more, and she likes it more than she expected she’d like something like that. His other hand moves up to sit on her back, presses her closer, and her own hands grasp his shirt a bit. He makes the first noise, when he moves his tongue against her lips and she opens her mouth for him. 

What she actually wanted to do was ask him about that whole her being his girl thing. Like how that became something without her realizing. But maybe this is that, too. She’s getting answers, maybe, without having to ask the awkward as hell question.

“Allie,” he says softly, pressing his forehead against hers. 

She feels cold all of a sudden, pulls back and looks at him. Fuck, maybe this is all really stupid, and just because he flirts with her doesn’t mean... “Do you want…” He stops her before she can pull away.

“I want you,” he says like some kind of confession, or something he’s been wanting to admit but didn’t know how, didn’t know if he should. “But you know that.”

She feels herself getting ready to run away, to literally leave, but that isn’t what she _wants_ , it’s just what her first instinct is here. She’s freaking terrified of whatever this is. Of him. Or being into someone the way she’s into Harry. Because it doesn’t feel casual. It’s not like they can just hang out and date and spend time at each others’ houses fucking around without anyone noticing. This feels different. Bigger. She wonders if she’d feel this way even if they weren’t here. She wonders if it would always feel so intense with him. There’s no way to know. 

But he’s being honest with her and she figures she owes him at least the same in return. 

“I want you, too.” It sounds childish, or something. Or at least not 100% accurate. She doesn’t just want him; she likes him. A lot. Harry puts his hands on her face, then smiles and leans down again to kiss her. She thinks he’s relieved, or something. 

They definitely came here for shoes, and now they’re making out - that’s what it becomes, anyway - in this storage room of this store with the weird hum of the fluorescent lights above them. She doesn’t hate it. And she doesn’t want to stop. No one knows they’re here, and it’s nice to be in solitude and not have this, too, be part of community knowledge, or whatever. Not yet. 

Harry’s hand moves down to her ass and he bends his knees a bit, and Allie thinks it would be so, so easy to follow this lead and lift her feet off the ground, let him hold her up or sit her on the shelf they’re next to, or whatever, and…

“Harry,” she breathes, and he presses his hips against her. God, that feels good. “We can’t just stay in here.”

The way he says, “Let’s go to my house,” so easily would literally make her fucking insane if she let it. She’s shaking her head, though, before he’s even finished speaking. Then his thumb is stroking the skin of her stomach under her shirt and she just… “Why not?”

He’s sort of pouting, but she knows he’s not being a jerk about it. He really just wants an answer, which is sort of understandable. This is intense. Are they really going to just walk out of here and act like it didn’t happen? She doesn’t want that, either. But it’s ridiculous to think those are the only two options. 

She places her hand on his chest, pushes gently, but grips his shirt before he goes too far. “What’s the rush?” she asks, looking at him from under her lashes and hoping it looks hot and not stupid. Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them again. 

He takes a step back, grins and stuffs a hand in his pocket. They look at each other for a moment, and she licks her lips, which definitely need a reapplication of lip balm now. She thinks he likes the way she looks like this - a little messy compared to when they entered. He looks the same, which is like, sort of annoying. But in an endearing way. 

“Shoes?” he asks, and Allie feels such a rush of affection for him that she’s almost taking him up on his offer to go to his house. 

He walks her home, the shoebox tucked under her arm, and when they get to her door he asks what she’s doing later. She knows exactly what he has in mind. She says, “Not you,” and he tips his head back as he laughs. “Come over for a movie after dinner?”

Harry nods, knowing, she’s sure, that they won’t be alone and they won’t be making out or anything like that. 

She likes that he says yes despite those facts. 

(She likes that he _likes_ her.)

… … …

She doesn’t want the whole guard to know everything. For now, they don’t seem to suspect it. 

Allie hasn’t gotten a chance to so much as kiss Harry in a week and a half. So it’s not ideal this way, either.

She knows exactly what she’s doing when she lies back on his bed once they’re in his room alone. He’s got a lock on the door now, and his back is to her as he turns it. When he turns around and notices her there on his bed, he hesitates a moment, like he’s trying to figure out if this is real, or something. And maybe she doesn’t even want to sleep with him (well, she _wants_ to, but maybe not _today_ ), but she wants to be closer with him than they have been. Seriously, other than their legs touching occasionally while watching movies, or at what’s become their regular food table, nothing has changed from what they were before that day in the store. 

Now, though, he comes over, puts his knee on the bed and moves towards her, and she adjusts the pillow behind her head before he kisses her. 

She doesn’t think of Luke, downstairs, again once Harry has buried his hand in her hair and pressed his thigh between hers. 

… … …

Grizz convinces her to go with him on an overnight visit to the farm. 

It actually takes a lot of work. Not because she doesn’t want to go, but because she hates camping, has always hated camping, and his promises that “It’s not so bad” and “The air mattresses stay inflated all night” aren’t really enough to make it sound attractive to her. But he’s her friend and he’s been working hard and things are coming along, and she doesn’t want to be a dick about it. 

Harry walks into her bedroom when she’s stuffing things into a backpack. She’s not overpacking, nor is she willing to carry around a heavy as fuck bag for the trek out there. It’s going to be less than 24 hours. 

Harry looks worried, or something. 

“What?” she asks, laughing, and debates between bringing one change of socks or two. 

“I want Luke to go with you.”

The way he states it like it’s his choice who chaperones her around makes her turn to face him again to make sure he’s not serious. Except she sees that he is. And it pisses her off a little. 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t fucking trust people not to…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He takes a breath. “There’re still people who think you’re guilty.”

Allie wants to roll her eyes. ”Are any of them working on the farm?” 

“No, but…”

“And you really think any of them would follow us all the way out there for a chance to...to what, exactly? Kill me?” she says on a laugh. Harry doesn’t find it funny. She watches his jaw twitch. For some reason, it takes just that to make her understand how serious he is about this. 

About her. 

“It’s not a fucking joke, Allie,” he tells her quietly. She realizes, too, that if he’s this serious about it, she sort of owes it to him to not dismiss it. If for no other reason than these are his feelings and she’s not a jerk about those. 

“I’ll be with Grizz,” she reminds him. “You trust Grizz.” He doesn’t look appeased by this. “What, do you want to come, too?”

“No, I just don’t want you to go.” Allie tilts her head. She puts her hands on her hips. He won’t break eye contact. He’s totally serious. There’s a small part of her that’s annoyed. She doesn’t say anything, and he eventually scrubs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Just be careful, all right?” She smiles. “Don’t do that. I’m serious.”

“Okay,” she says softly, and he walks over, sets his hand on her neck and kisses her. “Is this your way of saying you care about me?”

Harry looks at her like she’s missing something entirely. “Allie,” is all he says, then shakes his head and slips a hand under her shirt. 

She thinks what he’s not saying is that he’s been saying that in a lot of different ways. She thinks he’s doing a better job of it than she is. 

“I’ll be careful,” she tells him quietly, and he says, “Okay,” with a smile on his face that lets her know he gets what she’s actually communicating. 

She cares about him, too. 

He presses a kiss to the middle of her forehead when Grizz is standing right there in front of them. 

They’re barely into the woods - and therefore away from anyone else - when Grizz hooks his hands into the straps of his backpack and asks, “You and Harry?”

“Guess so,” she says, and it feels weird and completely unnecessary to downplay it like this, to the point that she has no idea why she’s doing it. 

There’s a pause, then Grizz says, “Okay,” and she thinks if somehow everyone else could react to it like this, they’d be fine. 

She’s not dumb enough to think that’s how it’ll go. 

… … …

Harry complains the _entire_ fucking time, and it’s driving her up the wall. He’s the one who said he should probably be more active, or whatever, and said maybe he could start running with her. She didn’t force him into this. She’s used to hearing her feet hitting the pavement and whatever music she might choose to have in her ears. His whining is interrupting the sort of meditative aspect to running that she’s found she really enjoys and gets a lot from. 

“Harry!” she shouts, stopping and shoving at his shoulder. He looks shocked. Then she laughs a little because it’s truly silly for her to be so bothered by this. “Would you shut the fuck up? You’re not gonna die.”

Luke and Clarke are in front of and behind them, respectively, and they’ve stopped now, too. Allie notices a grin on Clarke’s lips.

“How do you know, really?” Harry asks, and he’s totally playing with her. Which means he’s probably realized how annoying he’s being, too, and isn’t pissed that she’s calling him on it right now. “I could have asthma. I could...trip.”

All four of them laugh and there’s this glimmer in his eye when he looks at her. 

“Could it be that you’re bad at being bad at things?” she suggests, and watches his face change. It is absolutely a challenge, and she can tell her plan is working. 

“I’m not _bad_ at running. Who can be bad at running? Fuck that.”

Allie cocks her brow and starts moving backwards. He’s watching her. “Race you.”

He mutters something under his breath and she doesn’t hear it, really. 

She wins the race. Harry falls onto the grass in the park and Allie gets onto her knees next to him, puts her hand on his chest to feel his breathing beneath her palm. Luke and Clarke have their hands on their hips, are both breathing heavily. 

Quietly, Allie tells Harry, “Insert joke about stamina here.”

He narrows his eyes to a squint that makes her laugh again. “That’s not funny.” 

She’s laughing her ass off, actually. So much so that she falls back onto the grass, too, and when she catches Luke’s eye, he’s smiling like she and Harry are amusing him. The guard doesn’t _know_ about them in the sense that Harry has said anything, but they know because they’re not stupid and they’re with Harry pretty much wherever he is, and they know who is in the house. There’ve been no conversations or comments made about it, that she knows of. 

They walk and run at intervals back to Harry’s house. She doesn’t want to make it too hard on him, but she does like bugging him this way. She hears him groan when they get to his driveway and she sprints up the pavement towards the door. It’s the only time she starts running and he doesn’t follow suit. 

Once they’re in his room, he takes his shirt off and tosses it onto a small pile of dirty clothes, and god, yeah, she’s absolutely staring when he turns back around. Allie tugs her shirt up over her head and Harry’s eyes look down at her body, then he walks over to her and puts his hands on her hips. She knows she’s sticky with sweat - she can feel it - and he is, too. He wets his lips and she pushes his wet hair off his head. 

“Shower?” he asks, and she isn’t honestly sure she’s ever heard this tone of voice from him before. They’ve slept together exactly once, but she knows without a doubt that it’s exactly what he wants to do now. 

She wants it, too. 

She shakes her head, looks at his lips. Harry kind of takes over from there. She likes it. 

… … …

Aaron Anders calls her a traitor when she walks past him in the church before town meeting. She ignores him, but hates that she’s alone, too, that there’s no one - no guard, no Harry, no Helena - with her to cut Aaron a look or tell him to shut the fuck up. And honestly, she’d think now that she’s been ‘out’, or whatever, for this long, that people would get over it and just accept the fact that she didn’t do the shit she was accused of. But no one wants to talk about that, either. No one wants to talk about Campbell, and how he was convicted and _what_ he was convicted of. It pisses her off that people still act like she did anything even remotely close to as bad as he did. 

She sits near the middle of the crowd, and then Elle comes and sits with her, and Sam is behind her, squeezing her shoulder and signing something about Becca staying with the baby so he could come, and filling her in later. 

Everything feels pretty unremarkable. 

Then, after, she’s home and Harry’s there, too, because they decided to watch Felicity, which her mom owns on DVD and neither of them has ever seen. (Allie wants to watch it. She thinks Harry just wants to hang out in her room with her.) She’s making them tea and contemplating taking her bra off as soon as they get into her room. 

“You gotta run for council,” he tells her, like it’s just a fact. Like he’s decided it and now he’s saying it and she’s got to comply. Which - she’ll say - is absolutely _not_ the way to get her to do anything. She looks at him across the kitchen island. “Don’t act surprised. Really, you should be co-mayor with Lexie. You’re both better at this shit than me.” 

Allie still doesn’t say anything. She turns the burner off and pours water into two mugs. What she really wants to say is that it’s really fucking clear that women leading alone in this town is the same as women leading alone anywhere in the world. They’re not trusted by men, they’re discredited, they’re lied about, and in some cases they’re fucking murdered. 

She’s not going through all that again. 

“No one will vote for me.”

“They will.”

She drops her hand to the counter and makes a fist. “They _won’t_.” She looks at him from under her lashes, begging him to just _drop it_ , but knowing him well enough to know he won’t.

“Then I’ll change the rules and the mayors will appoint the council!” he protests.

Allie rolls her eyes. “Great, so when a new mayor is elected, they can stack the council however they want. It’s a shit idea, Harry.” 

He thinks about it, knows she’s right. He likely just said it out of frustration, and she’s not going to assume he actually meant it. If he did, that’s part of a bigger conversation. But she knows he’s not that stupid.

“You have to run.” He says softly, shaking his head. “We need you.”

“ _You_ need me,” she volleys back, smiling a little, hoping he’ll take it as a joke, because as soon as the words are out, she worries they’re too heavy. 

“Yeah,” he admits, though, whispering and walking over to her. He slides a hand across her back and she lets her eyes slip closed at the contact. “It’s stupid that I’m mining all these ideas and passing them off as my own. You should get a say.”

“People don’t agree,” she reminds him. “Literally got called a traitor earlier.”

Harry grins a little. “Okay, so that’s just one person who’d vote for someone else.”

“Harry.”

He leans closer, puts his arm around her shoulders and she tucks her head beneath his chin. She busies herself by swirling a tea bag in the mug, watching the water move and colour. 

“Seriously. I’ll campaign for you.” Honestly, it may be the only way to get enough votes. “It’s important.”

Honestly, she sort of likes just getting to live and not being on the hook for decisions. She likes giving him advice when he asks, and she’ll continue doing that if he wants her to. She just isn’t thirsty for a title and the responsibility that comes with it. Not right now.

She knows he’s right - it is important. But she also knows that it’ll be a whole _other_ issue if they’re going to be together. If Harry’s mayor, and her boyfriend, and campaigning for her. This is exactly the shit she was fucking _arrested_ for, or at least close enough to it that people are going to talk shit at best and overtly try to stop it from happening at worst. Actually, no. She knows that’s not the worst. 

He seems to understand when she tells him all this. Or at least he sighs and nods and leans his elbows on the counter as she sips her tea. His is left untouched on the counter. Tea is too valuable a resource to waste, so if he doesn’t have his soon, she _will_ drink it. 

“So would you rather be together, or be on the council?” he asks, and he’s looking at the counter, running his finger over a dark spot on the wood. She smiles to herself as she watches him. She likes him vulnerable. Sue her.

Allie presses a hand into his hair, then tugs just gently when he still doesn’t look up. He’s sort of smiling gently when he meets her eyes.

She just says, “Be together,” and he doesn’t react for a few seconds, but then sort of turns his head into her touch a little and closes his eyes. 

God, he’s kind of really doing a lot lately to make her crazy.

“Wanna go upstairs?” he asks, slipping his fingers through her belt loop and speaking lowly. 

Grinning, she cradles her mug in her hands. “And waste perfectly good tea?” she asks, and Harry groans a little, presses his face against her neck. And she does want to go upstairs, but not the way he’s suggesting. Not yet. “Later.” 

His lips are against her pulse as he asks, “Promise?” 

She starts moving away, says, “You can hold me to it,” and sort of loves the way he’s looking at her as he grabs the mug off the counter and follows her. 

… … …

They don’t get a chance to talk about telling people, or what that’ll look like. She sort of hates that it has to be a _strategy_ , but it is what it is. She knows, honestly, that it’s going to be a huge fucking deal to a bunch of people - possibly everyone. 

But then they’re walking down the street one day when everyone is out and about because the weather is super nice and they actually filled the public pool and opened it. Which is super wasteful, but Allie thinks people deserve some joy. 

Harry puts his arm around her when she says something that makes him snort out a laugh, and kisses her hair. She’s acutely aware of the eyes on them as they walk, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered whatsoever. Then he brushes his thumb against her bare shoulder when Helena smiles at them, and Allie realizes maybe this was a plan of his, or something. 

She asks him about it later, when they’re in his bedroom and she’s stripped down to her bra and underwear because it’s _hot_ and he’s wearing a tee shirt and plaid boxers and looking way better than he should, considering this wardrobe choice. 

“The bigger deal we made of it, the bigger deal everyone else would,” he says, and she just looks at him a moment before smiling and ticking her brow up like she’s impressed. “I’m not completely useless with strategy.” Allie moves so she’s on her knees between his legs as he lies back on his bed. “Not everything’s shit, you know.”

“Words of encouragement from our fearless leader.” 

He laughs a little, quietly. “Not fearless.” She leans in to press her lips to his, and Harry’s hand wraps around her upper arm before she can pull away too far. Instead of just giving in, what she does is turn so she’s sitting with her back to his chest and his legs astride her. It’s too warm for this kind of contact, but she doesn’t want to move, either. “Hey, Allie?”

She smiles, thinking it’s cute that he said it like that, to get her attention when they’re alone and cuddling, or whatever this is. 

“Hmm?” she closes her eyes when his hand moves up her shoulder and onto her neck, fingers grazing her skin as he moves her hair aside. He doesn’t say anything, though, so she turns her head to look at him. “What?” 

“We’d all be fucked if you weren’t here.” She’s just watching him. He’s being really, really sincere, and honest, and she doesn’t want to believe it, really. They’d be fine. Someone else would’ve stepped up. There’ve got to be other people who could’ve done what she did. Who could do what she does. “ _I’d_ be fucked if you weren’t here.”

There is such an easy joke there, but it’s not the time and she doesn’t want to ruin things. Harry’s sometimes a little closed off. She recognizes it because she is, too. She knows how hard it is to say things like this. She’s not going to make him feel badly about it or regret it. 

“Lucky you, then.” 

Harry breathes out a laugh, says, “Yeah,” and Allie’s eyes slip closed when he kisses her temple. “It’s only a matter of time before something gets messed up again. You know that, right?”

Allie smiles, for some reason. As if there’s any kind of humour at all in that. He’s right, obviously. She’s not naive enough to think the relative peace they’ve had these last few weeks will last long term. 

“It helps not to think about it.” He’s sort of tense beneath her, so she sets her hand on his thigh in what she hopes is a reassuring way. “Seriously. Don’t speculate.” He takes a deep breath and then leans his head against hers. 

She doesn’t know what they’re doing here. Literally this moment. They hadn’t said they’d watch something or play video games or anything else. The other times they haven’t made plans, they've just ended up making out or having sex. She’s not against it. She also really likes this. 

Harry’s breathing starts to match hers, and and they just sort of sit there together in the heat and the quiet until Allie closes her eyes and shifts a little. 

“Don’t sleep,” he says softly, and she can hear him smiling. 

“Don’t boss me around.”

Harry laughs, his chest shaking a little beneath her. “Wouldn’t even try.”


End file.
